The Experiences That Shaped How I Lead
Every role taught me something different. Some taught me how to build. Some taught me how to lead. Some taught me what not to do. Others challenged me to become a better leader, collaborator, and strategist. Taken together, these experiences shaped how I lead, how I solve problems, and how I approach change.
If you’ve already seen my resume, think of this as the director’s cut. The two-pager was designed to be concise. This page provides the additional context, projects, and stories that didn’t fit.
Ally Financial
Ally Financial is a leading digital financial services company serving millions of consumers, businesses, and automotive dealers nationwide.
Director of Product Experience – Dealer Platforms, AI & Customer Experience
2023 – 2026
I led product experience across Ally’s dealer platforms, customer care experiences, and early enterprise AI initiatives. My work included helping rebuild and strengthen distributed UX teams, modernizing major products and platforms, and finding practical ways to put emerging AI technology to work. The dealer business alone represented approximately $40 billion in annual originations.
Organizational Transformation & Team Leadership
- Rebuilt and stabilized distributed product experience teams across Detroit, Charlotte, and California by introducing clearer expectations, stronger coaching, better accountability, and much stronger partnerships with our business and technology teams.
- Shifted teams from primarily execution-focused workflows toward more strategic, experience-driven thinking, giving UX a stronger voice in product strategy and planning.
- Created more visibility and opportunities for people to grow, contributing to three promotions within a 12-person team after several years without advancement.
- Improved team engagement to consistently outperform department averages and helped develop several high-performing team members, including an Ally Award recipient.
- Improved planning, prioritization, and visibility through better resource forecasting, workflow management, and team practices.
- Participated in Detroit and DPX culture initiatives and helped improve recognition and rewards programs across the organization.
AI & Innovation
- Helped introduce Ally.ai, the company’s internal AI platform, by shaping the product experience and identifying practical ways teams could use AI for writing, summarization, research, knowledge management, and everyday productivity.
- Led the concept and product experience for Dealer Dash, earning the 2025 Ally Hackathon People’s Choice Award by demonstrating practical AI applications that improved the dealership experience.
- Co-led the exploration of Figma Make and other AI-assisted design-to-code workflows to understand where AI could speed up product delivery without sacrificing quality, helping establish some of the team’s first AI-assisted design workflows.
- Led AI-enabled innovation initiatives including intelligent vehicle recommendations, AI-assisted call summarization, conversational experience exploration, and emerging AI workflow concepts across customer and associate experiences.
- Participated in enterprise AI governance efforts covering responsible AI practices, Adobe Firefly evaluations, approval processes, and emerging AI policies.
Product & Platform Modernization
- Led product experience and modernization efforts across SmartAuction, SmartCash, Dealer Dash, Dealer Insurance, Vehicle Protection Center, Ally Ride Return, Associate Desktop, Interactive Voice Response (IVR), chatbot, and customer care experiences.
- Helped shape the long-term vision for SmartAuction through the SmartAuction 2030 strategy, exploring future dealer workflows, marketplace improvements, and practical opportunities for AI integration.
- Led the experience direction for SmartAuction Mobile 2.0, including vendor evaluations, modernization planning, platform collaboration, and improved dealer workflows.
- Led the modernization of SmartCash, a platform handling more than $140 billion in transactions annually between Ally and its dealership partners. The initiative was under-resourced and at risk when I took it on, so I reworked the UX approach, realigned Design, Business, and Development, and rebuilt the delivery process to get it back on track.
- Developed a dealer-focused design system tailored specifically to dealership workflows rather than adapting consumer patterns that didn’t fit the business.
Operational Excellence
- Introduced a low-fidelity design review process that shortened feedback cycles, reduced rework, improved stakeholder alignment, and helped keep large initiatives moving.
- Developed new resource planning and capacity tracking approaches that improved forecasting, exposed staffing constraints earlier, and supported better prioritization decisions.
- Improved UX delivery practices across workflow management, file standards, collaboration, and governance.
- Regularly provided design leadership through enterprise critique sessions, governance reviews, and executive product discussions.
- Led a team supporting five of the UX organization’s 15 most strategic initiatives in 2025 despite representing a relatively small portion of overall UX staffing.
What I learned at Ally
Transformation starts with people way before it starts with technology. Our most successful outcomes came from improving alignment, accountability, trust, and collaboration. Technology accelerates change, but people ultimately determine whether it succeeds….or not.
UnitedHealth Group / Optum
UHG is the largest healthcare company in the world, ranking 5th on the Fortune 500 in 2022. Optum is a business platform of UnitedHealth Group, providing information and technology-enabled health services.
I enjoyed a 12-year career with UnitedHealth Group / Optum, progressing from senior designer and team lead roles to leadership positions overseeing larger initiatives, teams, and business-critical healthcare experiences. Each step increased the scale of responsibility, complexity, and business impact.
Experience Design Director / Principal Product Experience Lead
2021 – 2023
Led product experience for Optum Behavioral Health Solutions within a healthcare technology organization responsible for more than $3.4 billion in annual business activity.
Key Contributions
- Led product experience strategy across enterprise healthcare platforms supporting providers, clinicians, and patients.
- Worked closely with Product, Engineering, Research, and business leaders to improve usability and accessibility while balancing user needs with business and technical realities.
- Helped elevate UX maturity across the organization through design critiques, accessibility advocacy, and more consistent design standards.
- Contributed to internal innovation efforts exploring emerging technologies and new ways to improve healthcare experiences.
What I learned
The best healthcare experiences don’t just improve usability. They help people make better decisions when those decisions matter most.
Senior UX/UI Manager
2018 – 2021
Responsible for product experience and brand direction for Point of Care Assist, a $60 million healthcare initiative designed to bring clinical information directly into physician workflows.
Key Contributions
- Led experience efforts across distributed teams, nine different workflows, multiple product areas, and third-party integrations.
- Served as the primary UX partner working with major EMR vendors to integrate Point of Care Assist directly into existing clinical systems.
- Provided design leadership and direction across design and development teams, helping improve productivity by 15% while supporting the delivery of new product features.
- Created a comprehensive design and usage guide for internal teams and external partners that improved consistency and increased efficiency by 30%.
- Helped define the information architecture and experience across complex provider workflows while balancing clinical needs, technical constraints, and business requirements.
- Supported executive leadership, sales, training, and industry events with product demonstrations, presentations, video, and a fully interactive sandbox experience.
What I learned
At enterprise scale, success is rarely about a single product. It’s about creating systems, processes, and partnerships that enable teams to consistently deliver better outcomes.
UX/UI Manager / Senior Team Lead / Senior UX/UI Designer
2012 – 2018
Progressed through multiple design and leadership roles while helping establish and mature UX practices across UnitedHealth Group.
Key Contributions
- Led experience design across multiple enterprise healthcare products while balancing hands-on design, team leadership, and increasingly strategic responsibilities.
- Managed multidisciplinary teams supporting enterprise initiatives totaling more than $20 million in combined program scope.
- Maintained better than 96% team utilization across capital projects over multiple years, the best in the department.
- Improved resource forecasting, planning, and delivery coordination across multiple programs.
- Helped establish reusable design patterns, UX standards, Angular-based front-end frameworks, and living style guides used across teams.
- Mentored designers and future leaders through coaching, design critiques, and career development.
- Served as a founding member of the Mobile App Design Council, helping establish mobile UX best practices across UnitedHealth Group.
What I learned moving through the ranks
As responsibilities grow, your impact becomes less about the work you personally produce and more about the environment you create for others to succeed.
Compuware Corporation
Compuware was a global enterprise software and technology services company that partnered with many of the world’s largest organizations to design, build, and modernize digital products and platforms, including 46 of the top 50 Fortune 500 companies.
Creative / UX Director & Systems Analyst
2010 – 2012
Compuware gave me the opportunity to work directly with General Motors during the early days of mobile application adoption, helping shape some of the company’s earliest consumer and dealer-focused mobile experiences.
Key Contributions
- Designed many of General Motors’ first showroom, owner, and dealer mobile applications across Chevrolet, Cadillac, Buick, and GMC, helping establish the company’s early mobile ecosystem.
- Designed the Cadillac CUE iPad training application, translating one of GM’s first fully touch-based in-vehicle infotainment systems into an intuitive learning experience for dealers, sales consultants, and customers.
- Worked directly with business stakeholders to define product concepts and requirements in Agile environments.
- Led user research, workflow design, wireframing, UI design, prototyping, usability testing, and A/B testing across multiple product teams.
- Partnered closely with engineering teams and creative agencies to turn complex business and technical requirements into products intuitive enough for everyday customers to use.
- Helped ensure the products we shipped met the individual experience and brand expectations of Chevrolet, Cadillac, GMC, and Buick.
What I learned
Great products emerge when business goals and user needs are treated as partners rather than competitors. I also learned that some of the best ideas never make it to market unless designers understand the realities of development, technical limitations, timelines, and organizational constraints. Innovation is important, but execution is what ultimately creates value.
Campbell-Ewald
One of the top 25 American advertising agencies and a subsidiary of the Interpublic Group (at the time).
Senior Multimedia Art Director & Developer
2008 – 2010
Campbell-Ewald exposed me to large-scale digital marketing, CRM, and interactive experiences supporting some of the world’s most recognizable brands.
Key Contributions
- Worked on digital marketing and CRM initiatives supporting Chevrolet, Michelin, USPS, Lear, Aramark, the American Heart Association, and the University of Michigan Ross School of Business.
- Developed award-winning interactive campaigns, including the Chevy Country Music Digital Calendar.
- Helped establish standards and processes across General Motors’ digital CRM initiatives.
- Worked across information architecture, user interface design, digital production, development, and creative execution—often bridging the gap between the idea and what could actually be built.
- Mentored junior creative talent and helped them develop their skills while meeting the demands of fast-moving client work.
What I learned
Storytelling is often the difference between a good idea and one that people actually remember. It was also where I learned that successful projects involve far more than great creative work—they require navigating changing priorities, evolving requirements, competing stakeholder opinions, tight deadlines, and countless moving parts that are often outside your direct control.
DXdetroit
I founded DXDetroit in 1995, originally building and repairing computers before quickly shifting into design and web development as the internet began changing how companies reached their customers. What started as a small side business grew into a digital studio working with clients across automotive, motorsports, entertainment, and professional services.
Founder & Studio Lead
Key Contributions
- Built and ran the studio from the ground up, managing everything from client relationships and business development to creative direction, design, development, and delivery.
- Built a long-running relationship with Newman/Haas Racing, an eight-time championship-winning Indy car team led by Paul Newman and Carl Haas. Beginning in 1998, DXDetroit created digital fan engagement and sponsorship experiences for the team, became an official team sponsor, and supported programs that often reached more than 15 million viewers per month. I continued working with the team through its final racing season in 2011 and have continued hosting its historical website ever since.
- Developed relationships with other clients including General Motors, AAA Michigan, 93.1 DRQ, Geoffrey Fieger, the Milwaukee Mile, Grand Prix of Houston, and Grand Prix of Cleveland.
- Worked across web development, interactive experiences, branding, advertising, and digital marketing during a period when many companies were figuring out the internet for the first time.
- Helped clients find practical ways to use emerging digital technology to reach and engage their customers.
What I learned
Entrepreneurship teaches accountability in a way few other experiences can. When you’re responsible for every decision, every client relationship, and every outcome, you learn quickly what matters most.
There’s another side to the story.
Working at big companies wasn’t the only place I was learning. Some of the projects I’m proudest of happened after hours – building products from scratch, filing patents, launching Kickstarters, and turning ideas into real businesses.